Singapore’s Prime Minister says he will relinquish leadership ahead of elections

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Sunday he will hand over the leadership of the People’s Action Party to No. 2 Lawrence Wong ahead of the next election, due before November 2025.

During the conference, Lee, 71, said that “if all goes well”, he intends to hand over leadership of the People’s Action Party (PAP) to the current deputy prime minister and finance minister in November 2024.

“I have complete confidence in Lawrence and his team and there is no reason to delay the political transition,” he said in a speech addressed to members of the PAP, the force that has ruled the city-state since Malaysia’s independence in 1965.

A leadership change has been in the works since Wong, 49, was appointed deputy prime minister in June last year, just months after taking charge of a new generation of PAP politicians.

Lee Hsien Loong, the son of the country’s “father” Lee Kuan Yew, who transformed the humble island into a modern country with an iron hand, called for support for the PAP to keep the city-state on the international stage.

The prime minister, in power since 2004, also explained that he had planned to step down as leader at the age of 70, but those plans were thwarted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wong, also finance minister, succeeds Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who fell out of favor after the PAP lost a record number of seats to the opposition Workers’ Party in the 2020 elections, particularly in the constituency elections he led.

If he becomes the next prime minister, the politician will become the fourth leader in the history of the Southeast Asian country and only the second from outside the Ly dynasty, after Goh Chok Tong, who was in power between 1990 and 2004.

The island’s future generation of leaders will face the challenge of maintaining Singapore’s 5.7 million people, 1.2 million of whom are immigrants, as a regional financial center at a time of geopolitical tension.